Cyclonus - Generations Combiner Wars - Voyager Class Figure

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While excellent at the time, 2008's Deluxe Cyclonus mold clearly shows its
advancing age. Plus with IDW's current interpretation resonating pretty
strongly with much of that audience, a new toy would be all the more welcome.
I'm not sure that this is what anyone really had in mind, though.

Cyclonus uses mind control to combine with any bot, siphoning the powers of whichever Autobots or Decepticons will serve his purpose of unleashing chaos across the universe.

So, Cyclonus is built on the same frame as Silverbolt, but with a healthy
number of parts switched between them. A majority of the torso is new to
properly give the toy more Cyclonus-specific features. In fact, the only thing
shared on the body are the abdominal panels and the front of the pelvis. And on
the back, everything is different. Though that's more a subject for the vehicle
mode.

Of major importance, Cyclonus has a new head sculpt. Sadly there is no IDW
inspiration to it at all.

That's really the case of all the Cyclonus-specific elements added. They fit
a general-purpose idea of Cyclonus without reflecting any specific single
instance.

For some that is probably a good choice, but others will be just as
disappointed that this effectively precludes a More Than Meets The Eye based
Cyclonus toy.

Let's go ahead and talk deco. Cause this is some purple, man. In fact, it's
too purple. The main body color is incredibly saturated. It shoots well past
any kind of normal Cyclonus purple, and even a few steps farther than
Galvatron's usual rich purples. It just plainly doesn't look right for the
character, though the color itself is actually really nice. Making this worse,
the package photos show Cyclonus in an almost perfect shade of lighter, more
muted purple. Otherwise, the layout of grey, silver and purple is pretty much
on target to capture Cyclonus's colorscheme. Given that around half of the
robot body is still Silverbolt's parts, it actually does an impressive job at
being Cyclonus.

Transformation runs very similar to Silverbolt, as you'd probably expect.
Aside from a bit of added partsforming, there's no real surprises to it. The
one change is just the head not going as deeply in to the body as Silverbolt's.
Instead it just kind of lays back. Make sure to turn the head around first
though, unless you want Cyclonus peeking out from under the jet!

The vehicle mode I think is where Cyclonus really manages to stand out and
impress. This is where the changed parts really succeed at massively changing
the visual identity of the toy, distinguishing it as much as possible from
Silverbolt.

Almost the entire jet structure is new parts. And in places where they can't
be, the new parts are made to hide as much of the reuse as possible.

It's a really impressive effort, and it pulls off a Cyclonus silhouette
really well.

One thing to note, there's a common assembly error. These vertical
stabilizers are backwards by default. See, the control surfaces are facing
forward. It's a simple matter to pop them off and reverse them so they'll match
the forward sweep of the main wings.

Though if you prefer them the other way, being backwards doesn't hurt
anything else.

I wasn't expecting a Targetmaster or anything (maybe a sword) but I would
have liked to see Cyclonus get a more specifically relevant weapon.

At least for the rifle. The shield piece is one thing since it has a
specific interaction with the vehicle.

But some other rifle to attach to the front of it would have been good.

Cyclonus does have new accessories though. These little winglets that need
to be partsformed around the toy.

They can be held as odd little knives if you like, and if you leave them on
the bottoms of the fists you'll reduce the parts removal needed during
transformation.

To be honest, I could have done without these. They're to fill in for the
forearm winglets, but they're a bit of a pain to deal with, and I like have the
forearm ports open for the main accessories.

Taken by itself, Cyclonus is a pretty decent figure. It may not be what some
people would have preferred, but it's not bad as a general purpose
representation. And I have to appreciate it simply for the level of alternate
parts employed to get it here from Silverbolt.

I can understand that this won't be for everyone, and it does have its
flaws. With no specific combiner team associated it might be a hard sell as a
standalone, especially without an appropriate Galvatron to go with it.

I don't expect anyone to be rushing to replace Universe Cyclonus in favor of
this, but it has a certain charm. At least, if you can get past some of the
particular characteristics of the Silverbolt mold...